The regular practice of storing proprietary or secret information in the memory of digital devices and transmitting that information over unsecure channels has created significant information security issues. While the information and associated systems can be password protected, and while encryption techniques exist to ostensibly render that information unusable to a hacker or thief, such techniques can unfortunately be computationally intensive or time consuming, or require a user to memorize complex passwords in order to render security sufficiently robust. Also, even with a well-chosen password, it is becoming increasingly easy to break conventional encryption methodologies. While it is possible to make encryption more complex, e.g., using very long keys for example (e.g., 256 bit keys, or longer), this makes the encryption even more computationally expensive; such techniques are also still subject to a number of attacks, such as key logging.
A need exists for improved methods, devices and systems to assist with the protection of electronic information and access to electronic systems.
The subject matter defined by the enumerated claims may be better understood by referring to the following detailed description, which should be read in conjunction with the accompanying drawings. This description of one or more particular embodiments, set out below to enable one to build and use various implementations of the technology set forth by the claims, is not intended to limit the enumerated claims, but to exemplify their application. Without limiting the foregoing, this disclosure provides several different examples of techniques used to encrypt (or decrypt) data using transposition vectors. The various techniques can be embodied as software for performing these techniques, in the form of a computer, service, cloud service, system or other device or apparatus, in the form of data encrypted as a result of these techniques, or in another manner. While specific examples are presented, the principles described herein may also be applied to other methods, devices and systems as well.